Youth breaking the mould for a brighter future in cocoa

"If you ask someone else to create the world you want, it will be small, but if you commit to creating your own world, it will be big. You have an enormous potential and the courage to believe and invest in your ideas to create a better future for you and your communities," says Alphonse Amani, manager of the cocoa and coffee programme of Rikolto in Côte d'Ivoire, during a marketing course for young entrepreneurs organised by Rikolto in the San Pedro farming community.

The hidden (and infamous) side of cocoa production

In the heart of the cocoa fields, it is not the youthful vigour of a new generation that is taking charge of the production, but the weathered hands of farmers, on average 50 years old, toiling alongside their children. Despite the legal bans introduced in Côte d'Ivoire in 2019 prohibiting children under the age of 18 from performing dangerous tasks such as wielding machetes or handling agrochemicals, child labour still accounted for around 39% of the agricultural workforce in 2019 (Norc, University of Chicago¹) due to a persistent lack of professionalised and affordable labour in cocoa-growing communities.

The cocoa business is not profitable for the owners of the cocoa plantations. Only 6.6% of the $138 billion generated by the global cocoa trade trickles back down into the hands of cocoa farmers². This statistic reveals a grim reality: 75% of smallholder cocoa farmers in Ghana and Ivory Coast do not earn a living income (2021, Wageningen university)³, which worsens issues like child labour and youth exodus. Lacking viable opportunities in their rural communities, young people are lured to urban centres or emigrate in search of illusory employment opportunities, leaving the cocoa fields and their communities behind.

Should we be worried? This situation weighs on our conscience, and invites us, as consumers who enjoy chocolate products, to consider the well-being of the communities and ecosystems that provide nearly half of the world's cocoa beans. The price of cocoa has reached unprecedented heights, soaring in 2023 and continuing to rise in 2024, yet this increase in value has failed to translate into improved returns for producers. The complex dynamics of this price escalation are intertwined with speculative manoeuvres in the stock market and growing concerns about low production in major cocoa producing origins.

Cocoa farmers are plagued by a litany of challenges, including ageing trees, pests and diseases, small plantations, climate change, depleted soils, lack of access to adequate agricultural inputs and labour shortages. These myriad factors contribute to poor harvests but also drive farmers to expand into new areas at the expense of forests and ecosystems already threatened by climate change.

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